Christmas

Everybody was excited for Christmas, especially us parents. Here's a shot early Christmas morning right after Santa left.

As you can see, Olivia and Carmen both got bikes as their big Santa present, and they've been a big hit. I'll post more on that in a separate post later.

The girls had a great time opening their stockings and presents. They wanted to immediately play with everything they opened, so we took a leisurely pace and enjoyed every minute of it.

Damon had a great time trying to shove the entirety of Christmas directly into his mouth, preferably all at once. He was especially fond of the nuts.

In addition to bikes, the girls both got some more My Little Ponies, some movies ("Hiccup" is Carmen's favorite, Rudolph is Olivia's) and puzzles. Grandma Roper sent some fancy dolls, complete with several outfits and an armoire, that the girls have been happy to take care of.

Grandma Brown contributed a very life-like cat that they like to brush, and a mini frying pan for eggs that Olivia loves (we've had many many eggs since Christmas).

Carmen also got a pair of rain boots that she has worn pretty much every day since Christmas. She's too cute in them to make her wear anything else.

I got another lens (50mm) for my camera, a new GPS, and a wonderfully dork pair of bowling shoes (more on that later, hopefully). Amber's big gifts were a pressure cooker and a fancy globe (and a "cross puzzle" book from Olivia).

We had just enough time to open all our presents before going to church at 12:30, then we resumed the festivities upon returning home, where Olivia managed to eat enough candy to get herself sick. Here's a rare photo of her lying down while awake.

But despite that, a happy Christmas was had by all, and it will be sad to see the decorations go back into the attic and to get back to regular life again.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we had Dan's family over for the reading of the Christmas story, with live reenactment! Damon was the unwitting baby Jesus, of course, Tristan and Carmen were Joseph and Mary, Olivia was an angel, and everyone else were wise men and shepherds, and Dan might have done duty as a donkey at some point.

Our costumes and productions keep getting better every year.  Afterwards we played Christmas songs with handbells, which went surprisingly well with the number of notes covered by small kids, then we sang Christmas carols around the piano.

And of course, we wrapped up by unwrapping one present each to whet everyone's appetite for Christmas morning.  Not that the kids needed any encouragement, they were very excited about Christmas.

Damon crawling

Ok, well, it's not quite actual crawling yet, but when tempted by choking hazards or expensive electronics, Damon has learned to army-crawl and wiggle himself to where he can do the most damage.

Christmas thoughts

Online shopping has got to be the best thing to ever happen to Christmas shopping. You can get lots of different kinds of presents all at one time, you don't have to deal with going to stores, and since you don't need the benefit of having the items right away (you have to wait until Christmas to open them anyway), the shipping time isn't even an issue.

The one thing online retailers haven't gotten the hang of yet is not completely giving away what's inside the box they send you. I bought a unique gift for Amber this year, one of those ones you'd never guess. The box arrived, as many do, while I was at work. I came home to find it with a blanket over it and Amber swearing she hadn't read anything. Upon closer examination I found that this box had a detailed description of its contents printed on it six times - once on each side and on two separate stickers. Luckily, they forwent the full-color glossy pictures (I did buy it during their Christmas sale after all).

If you have kids at home and no Christmas train, you're missing out. Ours has done countless laps already. Definitely worth the investment.

Our neighbor down the street worked all year on his Christmas light setup and now has one of those programmable light shows with radio broadcast, so the lights do cool things to the music. We've had pretty warm weather the last couple days so we've walked over with a handheld radio several nights this week to watch (and dance) to the music.

The family next door to him must have been trying to keep up with the Joneses because they got a 21-foot inflatable snowman to go along with their lights and other sundry yard decorations. I literally LOLed the first time I saw it because it is so ridiculously huge.

Christmases are getting more and more fun as the kids get older. We're entering the golden age for Christmases, probably for at least ten years or so until we start getting surly teenagers.

Christmas train

I finally got around to putting up the last "Christmas" decoration.  I picked up a few extra piece of track at the model train show a couple months ago (that I apparently I didn't blog about... it was fun!) and I was able to expand it a little this year.

Thanksgiving

I'm a little late reporting on Thanksgiving, but as you'll see, I have an excuse.

I combined some vacation days with the Thanksgiving holiday and took that whole week off of work. I like to have some kind of project to keep me busy (and give me an excuse to buy power tools) when I'm home for that long, so I decided I was going to make a shadow box.

I bought a miter saw and router among other things and got to work. I got about this far by the time I ran out of vacation.

I'll post more about this later when I actually finish it. The reason I didn't finish and why this post is so late is because Amber wanted some help making an idea she had for Christmas presents. So I busted out the jig saw and whipped out few of these.

It's an advent calendar, made of wood, with little nails sticking out. Each day you unwrap a little wood disc "present" and hang it on the tree like an ornament to tell the story of Jesus' birth.

I wanted to wait until everyone had received their tree before I blogged about it. But don't get any sneaky ideas you lucky recipients, I pixelated the later ornaments so they will still be a surprise!

Thanksgiving itself we spent with friends. We got together with two other families in our ward and joined forces to make a delicious meal. We entertained ideas of playing games afterwards, but kids, football, conversation, and late desserts filled our evening instead.

We didn't do our Christmas decorating the day after Thanksgiving like usual because of the advent calendars, instead putting up things here and there are throughout the next week. We let the kids decorate the Christmas tree.

They weren't much of a match for our 9-foot tree, but they tried their hardest to put all the ornaments on, even if some of the lower branches got a little crowded.

We still haven't gotten around to fixing it yet, so our tree still looks pretty much like this.

I thought I'd missed the window of good weather for putting up the outside lights after the rain brought cold weather with it the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but I got off work early the next Friday after a holiday luncheon to find the weather was too perfect not to be outside. I put up the lights in a t-shirt (on Dec 2) and even got a bit hot when the sun was shining on me, then Olivia and Damon helped me rake the pine needles in the front yard.

Damon wasn't very helpful, but he was very cute and had a great time chewing on pine needles.